29 April 2021 - Antibodies against Cancer

Question: What's your opinion on the feasibility of adapting the mRNA technology that was used to develop the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to treat various cancers?

Answer: Here is an article - https://www.mdanderson.org/cancerwise/can-mrna-vaccines-like-those-used-for-covid-19-be-used-in-cancer-care.h00-159457689.html.

The idea is that a cancer vaccine can generate antibodies to attack the tumor. When I was a medical student at the University of Michigan in 1980, we saw a patient with melanoma who was cured, at least at that time, with that approach. But the problem was getting it to work on a consistent basis - his case appeared to be a rare success. Today, we are more technically savvy, and we may have better results.

These points are important:

1. There will be no silver bullet. No one treatment option will likely cure a large percentage of patients with even a specific type of cancer. We will need combinations of treatments to attack different parts of the tumor. This is how we cured childhood leukemia, testicular cancer and Hodgkin lymphoma.

2. For adult tumors, unless the tumor is small, we will also need to monitor and treat the supporting networks that nurture the tumor and will create additional tumors over time [this is my proposal - it is not generally accepted].

3. We should also focus on changing our behavior, which could prevent 30-50% of all cancer related deaths, see http://www.natpernick.com/AmericanCodeAgainstCancer.html